As the number of available fonts rapidly increases, it has become harder and harder to properly manage fonts for electronic documents. Typically, an electronic document is assigned with fixed fonts in a software application. Later, in the process of editing and/or printing, these fonts are requested from an operating environment and applied to the electronic document. However, a particular font may not be available when requested. Usually, a user is required to perform a time consuming yet error prone task to locate and install the requested font.
Alternatively, a user may rely on font management software to help install proper fonts. Often times, a user is still required to input detailed specifications about requested fonts for such software to work properly. However, the vast majority of users may not be knowledgeable about font specifications such as where a font library is located, what ownership of the font library is associated with, and/or where a font should be installed etc.
In one embodiment, an electronic document, such as a word processing file which may have been just downloaded or otherwise received by a system, may have font information associated with the document, and a search for fonts required by the document, as indicated by the font information, may occur automatically in response to, for example, receiving the document or opening the document. The system performs the search by searching on local and/or remote storage devices for the desired font resources, such as those specified by the font information. After finding those resources, the system automatically (e.g. without user interaction) loads and/or activates those font resources.
Therefore, current font management mechanisms do not provide a proper solution for handling a large number of fonts.